Damn You, Amazon dot Com

Written by Tech

Posted from: Beijing

As I clicked on the “Place Your Order” button, having once again spent more money than I make in a week on Amazon, I realized I didn’t care. Because I am getting books. Deliciously bad books, the reviews say. If I end up destitute, selling potatoes roasted in a rusty barrel, it will not matter, because I will be the most obnoxiously well-read roasted potato(e) vendor in Beijing, and all anyone wants out of life anyway is a little originality.

Actually, this was basically an internet-driven downward spiral wherein I started out looking at Listology.com, or whatever it’s called, and found a list entitled “1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die”, which was translated in my feeble mind as “1001 Books that You Have to Order Right Fucking Now, Because You Could Get Hit by a Bus Tomorrow Morning, And You’ll Be Bored in the Hospital, so Go Get the Debit Card, Kendra”.

Among a Mongol horde of other things, I ordered “Sexing the Cherry” immediately after reading the review. Especially the part where it said, “But the novel’s freakish characters and flights of surreal fancy are insufficient to redeem its overwrought artifice. The work is further limited by its stridently dogmatic feminism, which, contemptuously belittling all men as arrogantly stupid bullies who are vastly women’s inferiors in maturity and moral fiber, vitiates its ostensible intent to transcend the narrowness of human perception.”

Yes, please. Proceed to checkout.

I don’t have a lot I get to brag about, so most of the time I have to make myself sound literary. And there I am, scrolling down this monstrous thing, ticking off the ones I’ve read, and I’m going, “Nope, nope, nope, I haven’t even heard of most of these” and I’m wondering how uneducated that should make me feel. Only after I closed the window did it occur to me that whoever wrote that list is just Some Guy, and Michael Marshal Smith wasn’t even on it, so who the hell does he think he is, anyway?

Some Guy who guilted me into spending my month’s savings on stuff I could have wheedled out of friends, that’s who. Some Guy, if your 5000 Ph.Ds have yet to land you a job worthy of your skills, there’s an NGO fundraising department somewhere with your name on it. You bastard.